The Relation of Merleau-Ponty and Blanchot to Derrida

Abstract

In this paper I examine the negative phenomenologies of Merleau-Ponty and Blanchot. Negative phenomenologies repress difference as the transcendental and the empirical are repetitions of the same through iterability. I argue that a negative phenomenology or a reversal of phenomenology repeats it rather than managing to escape from it. This is because it still proceeds within its metaphysical vocabulary and ontological structure. Thus, Merleau-Ponty and Blanchot, in inverting and reversing phenomenology, only repeat it by borrowing entirely from its metaphysical vocabulary and structure. Derrida's phenomenology in place, is a meta-phenomenology in discovering the origin of phenomenology as difference, or the difference between philosophy and non-philosophy, transcendental and empirical. Derrida discovers the condition of possibility for phenomenology as quasi-transcendental, or the interval between the transcendental and empirical which conditions phenomenology in its entirety. The transcendental and empirical are paradoxically identical and non-identical because the difference translates into sameness.